CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The future of the Space Coast's launch industry could be determined this summer, when two new large rockets lift off for the first time.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are betting a large part of the American rocket business on new designs built to compete with European, Russian, Japanese and Chinese rockets.
"The U.S. has a lot riding on the success of these two vehicles," said Ed Gormel, director of the Florida Space Authority. "This is going to be closely watched by anybody who has a dog in the fight."
Officials for both companies know good first impressions are crucial in a high-technology business whose customers want a reliable, cheap way to launch their own multimillion-dollar satellites into orbit.
By "launching it successfully, everybody sees it's successful and wants to buy it," said Adrian Lafitte, director of the Atlas launch program.
That view is not unique.
"You'll build a lot of confidence if your first launch is a success," said Rich Murphy, Boeing's director of launch sites for expendable launch systems. "If you have two or three with no problems, then customers and insurance companies will begin to think of it as a successful program."
Boeing's Delta 4 and Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 carry the names of highly successful rockets, but both are new designs that have little in common with their predecessors. If they work, the American companies will have more muscle to vie for satellite customers in a market that has more rockets than payloads. Brevard County and Florida itself will have new products to tout for its space businesses.
If the rockets fail, the companies could have a hard time selling them to satellite builders. Fewer customers means fewer launches to prepare, and that could lead to fewer workers on the Space Coast. Success, on the other hand, could bring the opposite.
Lockheed Martin is scheduled to go first, with a planned launch in July of a Eutelsat telecommunications satellite. Boeing expects to send its Delta 4 spaceward in August, also carrying a Eutelsat payload.
Two more Delta 4s will follow in October and November, with the second Atlas 5 sandwiched in between.
Although the companies' efforts have proceeded roughly parallel with each other, both teams say there has not been a feeling of racing to the launch pad.
"The whole team has focused really hard to get us to the first launch," Lafitte said. "It may appear to everybody that we are in a race, but we just want to be successful."
Joy Bryant, director of Boeing's new Launch Complex 37, said the demands of running a large new facility keep her from worrying about Lockheed Martin's efforts across the street.
"The two complexes are so different that I don't really think it's a race," she said.
The Air Force gave Boeing and Lockheed Martin $500 million each to develop larger, more economical launchers to pick up the slack of the old Titan program that was easing out and the shuttle, which was no longer carrying commercial satellites into orbit.
Both companies also invested their own money, though neither will say how much. They each built state-of-the-art launch complexes on the beach to handle larger, more complex rockets more efficiently.
Boeing will prepare its Delta 4 model inside a new hangar, bolting the pieces together while they lie on the floor, instead of stacking them on top of each other, as previous launchers demanded.
Managers hope to wheel the assembled rocket out to the launch pad and send it into space inside a week, compared with the month a Delta 2 spends on the launch pad before flight.
Lockheed Martin officials have a similar goal, but will stick with putting the spacecraft segments together in traditional fashion.
The Air Force rewarded both companies with satellites to launch between this year and 2006, but 22 of the 29 contracts went to Boeing.
The Delta 4 design relies on a single liquid-fueled rocket engine that has never flown before, the first new design in the United States since the space shuttle main engines. Solid-fueled booster rockets similar in operation to the shuttle's solid rocket boosters can help during the ride uphill in several combinations.
While Boeing and Lockheed Martin designed larger launchers, only Boeing was given the go-ahead to build a "heavy" version of its new rocket, which looks like three rockets strapped together.
The first of the largest models is not scheduled to fly until 2003.
Central to the work was a requirement that the rockets be simple enough to demand less preparation time and that they launch frequently to push down the costs of reaching orbit.
"We can launch the same number of vehicles on Complex 37 that we can launch from (the Delta 2 facility), and that has two pads," Murphy said.
The Atlas 5 combines a number of elements previously flown on other rockets, such as Russian engines the company used on the Atlas 3.
"We carefully developed a launch vehicle that was a steppingstone from the vehicles we have already done," Lafitte said.
About 85 percent of the Atlas 5 components have been tried on other rockets. The only component not tried is a rigid fuel tank.
"That part is not rocket science," Lafitte said.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2002 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
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